


Impetus

by Starlightify



Series: to ground [1]
Category: DCU
Genre: ADHD, Abusive Relationships, Autism, Background Relationships, Gen, Jewish Character, Past Abuse, Pre-Relationship, Recovery, Trans Character, neurodivergent character, the joker is mentioned often but does not appear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-24 00:24:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8348989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starlightify/pseuds/Starlightify
Summary: Harley leaves the Joker. Somehow, the entire Justice League ends up getting involved.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is, the Big Arc Fic that is several months in the making! The entire arc will be three stories long, all contained in the series "To Ground." Each story will have trigger warnings at the beginning of each chapter. Additionally, the entire series deals with abusive relationships and trauma. If those aren't concepts you're comfortable reading about, please don't sacrifice your mental health to read this story!
> 
> Characters and relationships will be tagged as they appear. We'll try to tag the overall themes of each story from the get-go.

Selina has always been of the mind that good news could never arrive via phone call at 3 AM. Anyone with good news waits until a reasonable hour to call, even the people whose nights are as late as hers. The only news that arrives at 3 AM is urgent, desperate, news that cannot wait an instant, news that is a matter of life and death, salvation and ruination. Things that vital can never be all good.

So when Selina’s phone, the one she uses for her less-than-legal activities, goes off on her nightstand when she’s getting ready for bed, she prepares for the worst. When she doesn’t recognize the number, she prepares even harder.

“Hello?” she says, not even pretending that she wasn’t already awake. Anyone calling for her on this phone knows she keeps a housecat’s hours.

“It’s Ivy. Harley and I need a safe place to stay, pronto.”

As calls from Ivy go, this isn’t the worst. But it’s past her usual operating hours. Harley’s the nighttime girl. And Ivy has plenty of little bolt-holes around the city, so why would they need one of Selina’s? She’s not ready to untense yet, not ready to let go of her anxieties about 3 AM phone calls. And then Ivy says “Harl’s run away from you-know-who.”

Selina freezes in place, the hairs on her arms rising.

Is she happy that Harley’s left the Joker? Absolutely. She’s seen the bruises. The acid burns. She’s helped Ivy before with backalley medicine, holding Harley still while Ivy stitched up slashes from sharp-edged playing cards. She’s toyed with the idea of killing the Joker herself, but he’s hard to find and even harder to get near. Between his toys and his ruthless devotion to making himself the best foe Batman can have, there’s very few Gothamites who’d stand a chance against him on his home territory.

And Selina’s not sure she _has_ a place that’ll be safe for Harley and Ivy. She deals in subtlety and misdirection, hidden things that fool anyone who doesn’t know exactly what to look for. When the Joker figures out she was involved with Harley’s flight - and he’ll figure it out, because Batman’s greatest enemy must be a detective too - he _will_ know what to look for. 

The Joker has never been gentle with people who challenge what he sees as his rightful authority, and he is always especially harsh with Harley. He’s going to use everything he has to track Harley down. He’s going to come for her, and anyone involved with her flight.

The trick, then, is to get even more people involved, enough that even the Joker will have to step back, step away. And hopefully get taken down before he can lay another finger on Harley.

“Are you being followed?” Selina asks.

“Do you think I’m a fucking amateur?” Ivy snaps. “He doesn’t know she left him yet. We’re trying to go to ground before he finds out.”

“I can get you a place,” Selina says. “You’re not going to like it.”

“I don’t care,” Ivy says viciously. “Make it fast.”

“Don’t get blown up before I call you back,” Selina says.

She hangs up.

She calls Batman.

“Talk,” he growls, because that’s the way Batman speaks. Keeping it short and sweet.

“Harley and Ivy need a safe place to stay,” Selina says. “Not Arkham.” Because for all that the people at Arkham do try, the Joker knows that place inside and out.

“What happened?”

“Harley left the Joker. He doesn’t know and he’s not after her yet, but he will be. You’re the only person I could think of who has a chance of keeping them safe.” Not entirely true. Close enough to it that he won’t push.

“Will he come after you, too?” he asks.

This one she can’t deflect - they both know the answer to that question, and any response besides brutal honest will just make Bruce disappointed and distrustful. “Of course. The Joker’s going to figure out Catwoman helped them eventually. But I should be safe in my other identity.” Gotham rogues don’t share their civilian identities with each other unless they’re public knowledge. Hers isn’t. She’d have a lot more trouble getting invited to charity balls if it were.

“Hrm.”

“Look,” Selina says, letting her concern leak into her voice, “I know you, Ivy, and Harley don’t really interact outside of punching each other in the face. But you have to believe me that Harley needs you, and Ivy’s desire to keep Harley safe is stronger than any impulse to take advantage of your hospitality would be.”

“Where are they now?”

“I don’t know. They’re waiting on me to direct them to a place where they can hide out.”

“Do they know you’re sending them to Batman?” he asks.

The million-dollar question. “Of course not.”

“Right. So am I supposed to hand over a safe house and pretend I never got this phone call?”

And now for the tricky part. “No. They don’t just need your safe house, they need _you_. If you can take the Joker on his home turf and win, you can defend Harley and Ivy from him.”

“I can’t watch them all the time.”

Selina sucks in a breath, the kind of shaky inhale that someone steeling their nerves would take. It’s not hard to put herself in the mindset of nervousness. It is hard to remember to display it. “You have friends.”

There’s silence. She waits, coiled. He will accept this or he won’t. There’s nothing more she can do.

Then Bruce says “Send them out of the city. Across the bridge, away from Gotham. Down the 15. Thirty-five miles out, there’s a dirt road marked with a white post that says ‘seasonal peaches.’ Have them turn on that road and follow it until it ends.”

“Ivy’s probably going to kill the road,” Selina says, relief suffusing her words. She was pretty sure she could get Bruce to call in the Justice League, and she had a back-up plan if he didn’t - call Lois, get her to get Clark to get the League - but that would have been much messier. “Cover it with trees and brambles that look like they’ve been there for years.”

“Good. The more they do to help me make them disappear, the better.”

“I’m going to give them the directions and then call you back,” she says, going over Bruce’s words in her head so she doesn’t forget them. Down the 15. Thirty-five miles. Seasonal peaches.

“If you don’t call in five minutes, I will assume that something has gone wrong.”

“That’s fair. I’ll check in in five,” Selina says, and hangs up. Her knight in bulletproof armor. She has to wonder if Ivy knew Selina would go to Batman - her close relationship with Gotham’s signature superhero is something of a secret, but Ivy knows about it. And that would explain why Ivy asked Selina for help rather than taking over a fortress somewhere and encasing it with thorns, Briar Rose style. If Ivy intended for Selina to go to Batman, that will make the introductions much smoother. Not perfect, of course. Ivy’s lesser-known superpower is superhuman cynicism, and even if she knows she needs Batman’s help, that’s not going to make her trust him. It might make her trust him less, actually. She’s a lot like Bruce that way. Maybe they can bond over their deep-seated relational issues.

“Give me something,” Ivy says when she picks up the phone.

Selina repeats Bruce’s instructions, omitting the part about who gave her the safehouse.

“Good. Meet us there,” Ivy says.

Selina is already changing back into her usual costume and loose-fitting outerwear to cover it up. “I will,” she says. “Try to leave me at least a trail when you choke out the road.”

“Only if you’re fast,” Ivy says.

~x~

Ivy hangs up. Harley is looking at the dashboard of the stolen car, fingers twitching intermittently. In the backseat, one hyena makes a sleepy grumbling noise at the other before settling down.

“Do you want to put the radio on?” Ivy asks.

Harley gives a jerky half-shrug.

“Do you want to talk?”

Harley shrugs again, but this time, it’s a little slower, more reluctant.

“You don’t have to talk about leaving him if you don’t want to. You can talk about your babies, or about Sailor Moon, or about whatever you want. It’s okay.”

Harley bites her lower lip. “I dunno. I just keep thinking… it wasn’t even anything, this time. He didn’t hit me or choke me or shoot acid at me or nothin’. He didn’t even yell at me.I just thought I should run away, and I did.”

Ivy is driving. She is driving very carefully, because she is protecting precious cargo. She is going to get Harley somewhere safe. She is not going to try to find the Joker and rip him apart from the inside out. Yet. She needs to make sure Harley will be protected first. “No one should be hitting you or yelling at you or choking you, and definitely not shooting acid at you either,” Ivy says. “You didn’t have to wait for him to do one of those things again in order to justify leaving. He never should have been doing those things in the first place.”

Harley pulls her hands inside her sleeves. She’s wearing a pajama set Ivy got her for Hanukkah last year, pink fleece decorated with tiny red lipstick prints and black buttons. It came with a matching set of slippers, though right now, Harley is wearing a set of black combat boots. The pajama top also has a big, floppy hood, and Harley’s pulled it so far down that Ivy can barely see the tip of her nose. “He’s been so nice to me, Red. I’m just ungrateful.”

“Nice people don’t try to hurt their loved ones like that,” Ivy says, taking the turn that’ll get her to the bridge. Not much traffic at this time of night. Used to be the bridge was crowded no matter how late it was, but considering the concentration of supervillains in Gotham and the hours at which they generally operate, nowadays the bridge clears out by ten. “The Joker’s not a nice person, and he definitely wasn’t nice to you. You don’t have to be grateful for a damn thing he ever did.”

“He only hurt me when I upset him,” Harley says, drawing her knees up to her chest. “An’ he bought me nice things, and said I was his girl, an’ he told me he loved me more than anybody.”

“No matter how many times you were happy with him, that doesn’t excuse him hurting you,” Ivy says. “And him hurting you was never your fault. It was his choice to hurt you, nothing to do with you.”

They’ve had variations of this conversation before, but this time feels… different. Weightier. Not like they’ll never have to have this talk again, but like it’s sinking in deeper, working roots into a new layer of soil.

Harley’s quiet for a bit, then says “You never hurt me.”

“I don’t ever want to,” says Ivy.

“Even when you’re upset at me?”

“Even when I’m upset at you.”

“Would you want to hurt me if I knocked all your potted plants on the floor? On purpose?”

Ivy tamps down on the rush of panic that question inspires. Harley would never do that. She knows Harley would never do that. But she also knows why Harley is asking. “I would be very upset. And I don’t think I’d want to be your friend any more. But I wouldn’t hurt you, and I wouldn’t want to.”

“Oh.” Harley sticks one hand back out of her sleeves and plays with a fold in her pants leg. “I never would, you know. Not on purpose. I know they’re alive an’ even though I can’t talk to them I’d like to think we’re friends.”

Ivy smiles. “They feel the same about you, Harl.”

She’s going to have to figure out how to get all of her plants somewhere safe. The Joker doesn’t know where she’s been living, but if he finds out, he’ll burn them all to the root. She may have to sell them, scatter them across Gotham. Ivy hates the thought, but she hates the thought of leaving her plants to the Joker’s mercy even more.

They cross the bridge. Ivy takes the 15.

“Can I turn on the radio?” Harley asks.

“Go for it,” Ivy says.

Harley fiddles with the dial, flips through three late-night talk channels, a country station, and five pop stations before finding one that’s playing something with a lot of bass and aggressive vocals. “They can have swears on the radio after ten, you know. They don’t censor it.”

“Makes sense,” Ivy says. “All the good kids are in bed after ten and the bad kids probably won’t hear anything new.”

Harley snickers. “What was the first swear you ever learned?”

Ivy shrugs. “Depends on how we’re defining swears.”

“Hm. One of the… the words you can’t say on TV. You know. Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits.”

“I’ve heard all of those words on TV.”

“Well, you couldn’t say them back in the seventies. That’s when the list is from.”

“Why is fuck counted twice? Motherfucker is just a derivative of fuck.”

Harley giggles. “Just pick one!”

“Shit, I think,” Ivy says. “I had a neighbor in Seattle. Always complained about the air smelling like shit. _God_ that pissed my parents off, thinking their kid was going to be corrupted by swear words.”

Harley breaks into full-on laughter. “Were you, though? Izzat your origin story? You hear someone say ‘shit’ one too many times as a little kid and you grew up to be a supervillain.”

“Must be,” Ivy deadpans.

Harley laughs and laughs, and it’s like rain in the jungle. Ivy can feel herself opening up, unfolding and spreading to soak in the sound of Harley’s happiness.

She checks the odometer. Not long until she’ll need to start looking for the signpost.

~x~

Selina calls Bruce on the way to where she’s hidden one of the cars she uses as Catwoman. “They’re headed to the safe house,” she says. “I’ll go with, make the introductions.”

“Good.” Bruce hesitates. “Can I convince you to stay with Harley and Ivy? You could benefit from the League’s protection as well.”

Selina considers it. But… “I can’t stay in costume 24-7. And I don’t think these are really the best circumstances under which to tell them who I am in the daytime.” She taps her nails against her phone case. “I’ll be fine in Gotham, big guy, as long as I stay Selina and leave the costume at home.”

“Can I hold you to doing that?”

Selina almost says ‘you can hold me to anything you like,’ because she really had been planning on going to bed before she got Ivy’s call and is pretty tired, which doesn’t do anything for her impulse control, but she contains it. Instead she says “I’m not about to go cowboying around with the Joker on my ass. You can trust me.”

“Hrm.”

“See you there,” Selina says, unlocking the car. It’s a tiny, dinged up old Prius painted a bland, nondescript gray-blue, with a smattering of bumper stickers about the environment and peace. In other words, it’s a car she can ditch by the side of the road in the middle of the woods without attracting attention. Anyone who inspects the car will assume the owner is off camping or hiking and not look much further.

Selina rummages in the glove compartment, pulls out a beanie, green lipstick, and a set of glasses. She applies all of them with the rearview mirror as her guide. She won’t take off the baggy clothes until she ditches the car. This is a transitory identity, one that blurs the path between Selina Kyle and Catwoman. The driver’s license that goes with this car says her name is Katherine Foster. Selina has a dozen-odd identities like this one, with varying levels of credibility. Some identities are disposable, meant to be used a few times and then discarded. Others have an actual legal presence, birth certificates and passports, apartments and electronic records, the whole thing. Katherine Foster is somewhere in between. Selina only really uses this identity when she’s planning on disappearing into the wilderness, which is not as common an event as she would like.

Once she’s properly outfitted, Selina taps out a quick text to Lois, from her Selina Kyle phone.

_friend ran away from abusive bf. am giving her a hand. will update you when you wake up. love you._

It still feels new, thrilling, to tell Lois she loves her. Selina has a sudden, morbid hope that she’ll live long enough for saying ‘I love you’ to Lois to become routine, a comfortable familiarity.

She starts the car. Pulls out of the garage. Aims towards the bridge and starts driving.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, because there is SO MUCH "to ground", we're going to try biweekly updates. Depending on if that's a workable schedule (meaning, if it still gives us enough time to work on future fics) we'll do biweekly updates until all of "to ground" is posted and switch back to only Saturday updates at the end.

“Absolutely fucking not,” Ivy says.

This is going well, Bruce thinks. He eyes the hyenas, who had offered him a few cursory growls before deciding that their new residence was much more interesting than he was. One of them is trying to dig on the couch cushions. The other one is licking the glass door of the entertainment center.

Why can’t anyone in his life have normal pets?

Harley is nursing a mug of hot chocolate at the kitchen table. Bruce notes that she chose the ‘Viva Las Vegas’ mug, and files that information away in case it becomes relevant later. You never know.

Ivy, for her part, continues gesturing violently at Selina, who looks totally unruffled. He doesn’t think anyone, including Ivy, is at all convinced her protests are much more than posturing. They are in the middle of the woods. If Ivy didn’t know accepting asylum from Batman was her and Harley’s best chance, the two would be long gone and Bruce and Selina would be slowly decomposing amongst the tree roots. He’s still not letting his guard all the way down around Ivy, but that’s just a matter of principal.

Bruce glances at the hyenas again, then pivots towards Harley. “May I join you?” he asks, tucking his shoulders in. The Batman costume is built to make him look big and intimidating, but it’s just as important in his line of work to know how to look non-threatening as it is to know how to look threatening, and he softens his body language as much as he dares.

Harley eys him over the rim of her mug. “‘S your house.”

“But it’s your choice.”

Harley considers this. Her pajamas seem incongruously adorable, considering how she regularly wields a thirty-pound mallet Bruce has found himself on the other end of far too often. “‘Kay. Pull up a chair. You want some hot chocolate?”

“Maybe later,” Bruce says. He picks his chair very deliberately. Not so close Harley will feel crowded, but not so far that if Ivy does decide to attack he won’t be able to at least try to stop her. He probably wouldn’t be able to actually stop her. The only reason he’s survived their previous encounters is that Ivy has no real interest in killing him - she wants to stop him from stopping her, but she doesn’t go out of her way to try to make him die. He supposes he should count himself lucky. He knows what happens to the people that Ivy wants to see dead.

Bruce believes Selina believes this is worth a truce to Ivy. Evidence seems to indicate Selina is right. But that doesn’t mean Bruce is about to stop being a ‘right paranoid little cuss,’ as Alfred used to call him.

“I don’t think I ever learned your hyenas’ names,” Bruce says.

Harley points at the hyena who’s still digging on the couch. “That’s Dottie,” she says. “An’ that’s Scoob.” Scoob has moved from licking the entertainment center to licking the drapes. “They had other names, but I like these ones better.”

“Scoob has good taste,” Bruce says.

Harley snorts. “You’re a funny guy, B.”

Bruce shrugs.

“I’m not gonna tell you where Mister J is.”

Bruce remains neutral. “That’s your choice.”

Harley narrows her eyes. Bruce guesses that wasn’t the answer she was expecting. “It’s one thing to run away, but I won’t sell him out to the enemy. Not ever."

“Okay.”

“Ain’tcha gonna get mad?”

Bruce shrugs again. “You’ve made your position clear. I’ll respect it.”

“You ain’t just funny ha-ha, huh? You’re funny in the head.”

“Probably.”

“That’s my professional opinion.”

“I’ll take it under advisement.” Ivy seems to be winding down. “Would you like me to give you a tour of the place, or do you want to explore on your own?”

“This house got any secret passages?” Harley asks. Bruce pulls up a mental schematic.

“There’s a basement under a trapdoor, but I’m not sure if that counts.”

Harley sets her mug down on the table and claps her hands together excitedly. “Don’t tell me where, I wanna find it!” She springs out of her seat. “Come on, babies, mommy’s going treasure hunting!” Harley sprints past a startled Ivy and down the hallway. Scoob follows her immediately. Dottie gives the couch cushions a few more scratches, then trots down the hallway.

Bruce stands. “Ivy. It would be best if you didn’t have any contact with the outside world through your usual channels. The Joker’s information network runs deep.” As far as Bruce can tell, the Joker gets most of his information not from formal agents, but from people he threatens and tortures. It’s far more effective than it has any right to be. “I can get you both untraceable phones by the morning. I’ll also want a list of necessities - this house is stocked with generic non-perishable items, but I doubt it’ll have everything you need.”

“You’re going to an awful lot of trouble for us,” Ivy says, crossing her arms. “What the hell do you think you’re buying with this?”

“The safety of a battered woman and her ally,” Bruce says. “I’m going to contact the Justice League and let them know the situation. At least one League member will be watching the house at all times. You don’t have to talk to them or let them in, but I want your word that you and Harley won’t go anywhere without discussing it with us first. The League has better things to do than guard an empty house.”

“I want your word that you and your pals aren’t going to arrest us or turn us in,” Ivy responds. Vines curl along her neck and writhe beneath the sleeves of her blouse.

“Jail is the last place I want you two right now,” Bruce says. Jail is, honestly, not really the place he wants anyone to go, but his tenuous cooperation with the law as it currently stands is the only thing that keeps Commissioner Gordon from getting kicked off the force, and Bruce would rather not have to deal with a completely rotten police force instead of the three-quarters rotten one he has now. Prison abolition is Bruce Wayne’s crusade, not Batman’s. “You have my word.”

“Then you have mine.”

Selina claps her hands together. “Great. Ivy, let’s start on that list. Hotshot, you call the big guns.”

“Hrm,” Bruce grumbles, because the day he stops resisting Selina’s nicknames is the day she wins. Wins what, he’s not sure, but that doesn’t matter as much as preventing her victory.

As Ivy and Selina begin roaming the house, Bruce pulls out his League communicator. As usual, J’onn’s on nighttime watch duty. The standard Martian sleep schedule is four to five hour-long naps throughout the day, which means that J’onn is best suited to take the night watch. Bruce is slightly jealous of J’onn’s circadian rhythms. Four or five hour-long naps is a much more reasonable way to sleep. “I’m calling for Indigo Spectrum Viewpoint protocol, at location beta prime dash zero zero zero three ten five.”

“I see,” J’onn replies. “Are you the first refraction?”

J’onn understands codes. This is gratifying, because certain members of the League insist that codes are ‘confusing and unnecessary.’ “Confirmed,” Bruce says. “Changeover at zero seven hundred hours. League meeting at zero six hundred hours, outside location to be guarded.”

“Understood. Remain safe, Batman.”

“No promises.”

There. He’ll explain to everyone tomorrow, so he only has to say it once. Of the League, only he and Clark have actually fought with Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. That should go a long way towards making the League accept babysitting supervillains, because most of them don’t have any specific bad associations with their new wards. And Clark is still holding out hope that _Lex Luthor_ will change his ways, so that indicates that Clark’s not big on grudges. Bruce doesn’t anticipate much trouble, but he hasn’t gotten through life by preparing for the best-case scenario.

Now he just has to secure the perimeter. Which is not usually something that takes two hours, but he’s damn well going to try to drag it out as long as possible.

~x~

“This is way worse than Superman’s dog,” Black Canary says.

John nods. “So much worse.”

“Don’t drag Krypto into this,” Clark says, because while he has no problem watching out for Harley and Ivy, he doesn’t see why anyone needs to get his dog involved.

“Batman’s just a big softie underneath all the kevlar. You bleeding heart, you,” Barry says, and then quails under Bruce’s truly impressive stare.

“Are there any objections to this plan,” Bruce says, voice even more growly and disapproving than usual, “that people want to voice?”

Shayera shrugs. “I have none.”

Diana, much to Clark’s surprise, raises her hand. “I have a concern, Batman.”

“Please share,” Bruce says.

“Harboring them so near Gotham seems unwise. I would offer Themyscira as a refuge for Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy,”

Bruce’s jaw twitches. Clark’s pretty sure his eyes are bugging out under the cowl. “Themyscira,” Bruce repeats.

“The Joker will never reach them there,” Diana says. “They will be safe among my kin, and the League need not constantly observe them. Further, among the Amazons we have many who have studied counseling survivors of abuse. Harley could make use of these resources.”

“I. Yes. That is. A very good idea.” Bruce shakes his head. “Ah. If this solution is agreeable to the rest of the Amazons, I would then like to request the League’s help resettling Harley and Ivy on Themyscira, as well as helping me track down the Joker and putting him behind bars for good.”

“The solution will be agreeable,” Diana says. “This is not the first time we have provided a refuge to people of your world fleeing abuse, and they will understand the necessity of harboring these two on the island.”

“Harley and Ivy are supervillains. I want to check in with your people first.”

“They are supervillains of Man’s World,” Diana says. “Not Themyscira.”

“Wonder Woman. Please.”

“I accept your plea, though I do not understand it.” Diana settles back on her heels. Clark’s not sure, but he thinks she looks…. almost amused.

“Any objections to the new plan?” Bruce asks. No one says anything. “Good. Let’s ask Harley and Ivy what they think.”

They enter Bruce’s safehouse single file - all except J’onn, who remains outside, invisible and keeping watch. J’onn still isn’t comfortable with the attention they’d receive from being a known member of the League, and while Harley and Ivy are unlikely to be in a situation where they could tell the press about the Martian who hangs out with a bunch of other superheroes, J’onn doesn’t want to risk it.

Clark understands that. He was wary about revealing himself, too, and he hadn’t had nearly the amount of bad experiences with humans that J’onn has had.

Clark looks around the safehouse, and notes that something has been chewing on the drapes. Something with a serious set of teeth. Bruce mentioned hyenas - how’d Harley manage to get pet hyenas, anyway? Does she have a permit? Do they even make permits for that?

Selina is sitting at the table, resting her chin on one hand, a half-full mug of coffee beside her. She’s in full Catwoman costume. It’s very weird to see her like this in the daytime, almost as weird as it was the first few times when Clark saw Bruce in full Batman regalia in the daytime. Selina gives them a half-wave. “Hey,” she says. “Ivy was plant-eavesdropping. They’ve gone to pack their stuff.”

Clark looks at Bruce. “I guess they think it’s a good idea.”

Someone with a build like a ballerina bounds down the hallway with a duffle bag in tow, and it takes Clark a moment to recognize Harley without the full-face makeup and out of costume. He didn’t realize she had vitiligo, or that she had so many scars. Dozens of them, striping and spattering her arms and legs, winding beneath the hems of her shorts and out from the sleeves of a powder blue t-shirt. He wonders how many of them are from the Joker. “I’ve always wanted to live on an island,” Harley says. “A real island, not one with a million bridges an’ tunnels and all. Gosh. Is everyone there as pretty as you, Wonder Woman?”

Diana smiles. “Yes.”

“Oh boy! I hope I’m not overdressed. Or underdressed. Can I have a toga? Do you wear togas, or do you all dress like-” Harley gestures at Wonder Woman’s costume, “-’cause that’s a great look, I just don’t know that I have the bust for it.”

“You may wear whatever clothing you desire,” Diana says. Clark is absolutely sure that she’s amused now. He also thinks he sees the end of a tennis racket sticking out of Harley’s duffle bag. He doesn’t use x-ray vision to check to see if his guess was accurate, because quite frankly, he doesn’t want to know.

“D’you have Wi-Fi out there?” Harley asks. “Not that it’d be a dealbreaker, but I wanna be prepared if you don’t.”

“We have Wi-Fi. It is important for us to keep up with the events in Man’s World, and the internet is a useful tool.”

“Neat. Hey, you ever seen-”

“Harley,” Ivy says. She’s carrying a much smaller bag that seems to have been packed with a much more reasonable amount of things. Clark wonders, abruptly, how much of the stuff in Harley’s bag is hers and how much of it she’s taken from the house. He decides that he doesn’t want to know that either. “Later.”

“‘Kay,” Harley says. “So how do we get to Themyscira? It’s magic, right? Otherwise everyone’d be trying to get there all the time. It takes special Amazon magic, right?”

“Something like that,” Diana says. “If being carried by a person in flight is an acceptable mode of transportation, we can take you there that way. If not, there is an Amazon cargo ship at port not far from here. What would you prefer?”

“Cargo ship,” Harley says immediately. “Can we drive there? I wanna drive there. It can be a road trip.” Clark notes, out of the corner of his eye, that Ivy had stiffened when flight was mentioned, and relaxed when Harley chose the cargo ship. Is Ivy afraid of flying? Plants aren’t really known for their flight capabilities - besides dandelions and maple copters, which don’t really fly - and he knows that Diana is generally uncomfortable with flying because of her connection to the earth. He wonders if it’s the same for Ivy.

“Driving is acceptable,” Diana says, inclining her head slightly. “I would accompany you in the car and provide directions. Other League members will guard the car.”

“Don’t you think having a bunch of you flying around the car would put up a big sign that says ‘come get us’?” Harley asks, rocking from her heels to the balls of her feet and back again. “I know I’d want to know what was up with a car if Big Blue and Green Man and everyone was around it.”

Clark catches John mouthing “Green Man?” to Shayera and bites his lower lip to keep himself from grinning.

“We can, on occasion, be subtle,” Diana says. “Hard as that may be to believe.”

Clark isn’t sure, but he thinks Diana gave him a Look. Which is. Unfair. He can be subtle! He’s subtle every day as Clark Kent, which… whoops, speaking of, he probably needs to go back and get ready for work. He tries to catch Bruce’s eye, then mimes pointing at a wristwatch. There. Subtle.

“Why are you pointing at your wrist?” Ivy says.

Okay.

Maybe subtlety is not his strongest attribute.


End file.
